Hi guys, I have a difficult question to ask: is Spiceworks going to be around for much longer? I ask this question because if it is not, then those of us who make use of the product need to start thinking about transitioning to another product.

I have been hearing a lot of rumours lately that Spiceworks is out of runway. Multiple sources have come to me independently to say, essentially "Spiceworks is going to run out of money after X". That X is most frequently cites as September 2019, though I have heard a couple of other variants on this.

There are a lot of additional details that I have been given which, if true, would back up the story. I won't go into them, as they might reveal my sources, and/or could affect the privacy of third parties, but suffice it to say that they are specific enough to make me sit up straight and ask questions.

I thought long and hard about whether or not to use my back-channel connections to ask this question in private, and ultimately decided against it. The rumours are flying around, and they've gone well past a few quiet whispers in my ear. This is being openly discussed in other IT communities at this point.

The viability (or lack thereof) of Spiceworks as a going concern directly impacts every single user of the Spiceworks software. Spiceworks is effectively the core of a SIEM platform*, and many organizations have built deep integration around it. If Spiceworks is going to run out of money and fall over, then those organizations which are reliant upon the software need to have time to transition to a different product.

As a result of the huge scope of impact to the answer to this question, I am asking this question of support, in public. We all need to know. If Spiceworks is not running out of money in the next year or two, then I apologize for having created a kerfuffle by asking. If, however, the runway is in fact short, please tell us. Nobody wants to be caught up in an emergency migration at the last minute, especially not in September, which is when silly season begins for most organizations.

Thank you.

*Please note, as was correctly pointed out, Spiceworks isn't a SIEM platform. I meant to say "Spiceworks is effectively the core of a helpdesk platform", but wrote SIEM, as, at the time of writing, I was working on a bunch of SIEM papers. This edit is to acknowledge my oopsie.

First, thanks to all of you for the interest and discussion here along with the passion for and support of Spiceworks! This is a unique place in the IT world and so much of that comes from the conversations and relationships we all have. As some of you pointed out, companies might not normally respond … but nothing about Spiceworks has ever been to normal so here goes!

Let me address Trevor’s question and the rumors head on: no, we’re not “shutting down” in September 2019, or for that matter in 2019, or beyond.

We have a great multi-year plan we’re executing on, much of which we previewed at SpiceWorld 2018 last October (starting at the 8:00 mark in this video). I and the team have never been more excited in Spiceworks’ future and how we can help the global community of IT pros and the organizations in which they work (whether it’s a business, non-profit, Fortune 500 company, MSP or tech brand).

Let me put where we’re going in context of where we’ve been. Together, we’ve evolved over the past 13 (!!) years as the IT landscape has evolved so we can help as many of you as possible. It’s helpful to think of this journey as chapters in a great story we’re writing together:

Chapter 1 – Ad-Supported IT Software. In 2006 we started with a free, ad-supported app to scan networks. Over time we added the Help Desk and more features. Hundreds of thousands of IT pros trusted us to run that behind a firewall in exchange for relevant IT ads and emails.

Chapter 2 – The Rise of the Community. While the community started to form shortly after our first release it really took off in 2011 and over the next four years grew tremendously to over 4 million visitors every month. This meant more people were getting value every month from the community than the applications. The company also grew significantly and candidly got too big with over 400 employees.

Chapter 3 – Make It More About Your Business. In early 2016 we realized that for all we had done we could do so much more if we made Spiceworks more about the organizations in which you work – but to do so we would need to invest a lot in how we handle and process data. We also realized we needed to be a leaner and more efficient company if we wanted to best serve the more than 7 million IT pros that were coming to Spiceworks every month!

Chapter 4 – The IT Marketplace. This is what we started to cover at SpiceWorld 2018. In short, we have become the largest IT “marketplace” of IT on the planet and we can now do a lot more to better enable direct connections between buyers and sellers, driven by the insights and intelligence we have on what problems people are trying to solve. That has already shown up in features such as Fast Answers and our intent segments (companies that are in market for various technologies).

I’m proud of what we accomplished but also frustrated that we can’t get everything right or done at once. For those who think of Spiceworks apps primarily, our focus has been to move desktop/on-premises functionality to the cloud while providing an option for those that need an on-premises solution to deploy that code locally. It will take time to get this right but we’re working on it (see more here).

For those that think primarily of the online community functionality, we’ve continued to invest in performance and speed, while adding features that promote community health (and be on the lookout for the new “Status Program”), and adding two Community Managers, Casey M (Spiceworks) and Suzanne (Spiceworks).

For the advertisers, we’ve improved the engagement of our advertising products as well as the ability to find the right customers more effectively. Over the next several months you’ll see a number of new features that give you insights on how to better support your organization and allow you to find help more effectively – whether that’s from another IT pro, a local MSP, or the brands that might have the right products for you.

Over 13 years a lot of people have come and gone from the company and/or community... and that’s healthy for both. We’ve evolved the management team by bringing in more IT and Internet experience from Microsoft, Lenovo, RetailMeNot, IDG, Ziff Davis, Disney and more. We now have Spiceworkers working in Austin, across the United States, London, Barcelona, Munich, Sydney, and Hyderabad. Jason E (Spiceworks) has returned to Spiceworks to head engineering under Manish (Spiceworks). I’ve made lifelong friends with SpiceHeads that joined the community 13 years ago…and welcome those that have just joined.

In the absence of more communication from Spiceworks (and from me), it’s understandable how such rumors can gain a life of their own. Hopefully this update on our past and direction helps shed light on the truth.

Thanks again for the trust, energy, passion, and time you have all put into making Spiceworks the most unique and valuable IT resource on the planet! It’s been an incredible journey in helping you to better use technology to transform and improve your organizations... while building the most trusted IT marketplace on the planet. I look forward to the rest of Chapter 4 and beyond in our journey together!

69 Replies

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I think anyone using the free version doesn't expect it to be a highly supported enterprise class application. I know some do pay for it just to be ad free and have support, but it is still not an enterprise class help desk tool and I don't think they have ever marketed it as such. I am not sure where you heard the rumors and I am not sure you are trying to start a kerfuffle since you have not posted to the forum in two years

I don't think anyone expects it to be a "highly supported enterprise class application". I certainly never have. But there's a difference between "not really well supported" and "the vendor is no longer operating, and/or has jettisoned the product altogether". Speaking of Spiceworks specifically, there are a few concerns. The big one is that I don't know if Spiceworks (the app) will continue to function if the servers on Spiceworks' side are turned off, and/or to what extent functionality would be compromised.

Spiceworks has been a great little application for small businesses, most especially as a ticketing system. There are still a number of organizations using it every day. If it is going to turn into a pumpkin, knowing in advance is better than waking up one day, and discovering "oh shit, the company that makes this app we rely on has gone under". It gives time to transition. That is my only concern here: do those organizations which rely on the Spiceworks application need to start planning for a transition to other products?

One does not have to be an active member of the forums, or part of any particular social clique to care about that. It is a perfectly valid, rational thing to ask about. I couldn't care less about any of the byzantine cult politics that occur in the community. I care only about potentially affected end users.

Look, If I wanted to cause a kerfuffle, I wouldn't be asking here. I did not, for example, write an article and plaster the rumours all over a major tech news site, though that is something I could have done.

I chose to post here deliberately because it means that official representatives from Spiceworks (the company) can respond. I chose to use a relatively quiet sub-forum that would nonetheless be monitored. It makes sure the response to the question is public - whether that be an actual response from the company, or the deletion of the thread - and thus the response can benefit others asking the same question. It also makes sure the company has a chance to respond on their own terms, instead of having to fight a PR battle against rumours posted on tech sites (or other communities) where they don't have an opportunity to respond.

But the question is valid, and to be perfectly frank, enough people have asked me in the past month that it was worth digging up a login I hadn't used in years just to ask it.

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I don't think anyone expects it to be a "highly supported enterprise class application". I certainly never have. But there's a difference between "not really well supported" and "the vendor is no longer operating, and/or has jettisoned the product altogether". Speaking of Spiceworks specifically, there are a few concerns. The big one is that I don't know if Spiceworks (the app) will continue to function if the servers on Spiceworks' side are turned off, and/or to what extent functionality would be compromised.

Spiceworks has been a great little application for small businesses, most especially as a ticketing system. There are still a number of organizations using it every day. If it is going to turn into a pumpkin, knowing in advance is better than waking up one day, and discovering "oh shit, the company that makes this app we rely on has gone under". It gives time to transition. That is my only concern here: do those organizations which rely on the Spiceworks application need to start planning for a transition to other products?

One does not have to be an active member of the forums, or part of any particular social clique to care about that. It is a perfectly valid, rational thing to ask about. I couldn't care less about any of the byzantine cult politics that occur in the community. I care only about potentially affected end users.

Look, If I wanted to cause a kerfuffle, I wouldn't be asking here. I did not, for example, write an article and plaster the rumours all over a major tech news site, though that is something I could have done.

I chose to post here deliberately because it means that official representatives from Spiceworks (the company) can respond. I chose to use a relatively quiet sub-forum that would nonetheless be monitored. It makes sure the response to the question is public - whether that be an actual response from the company, or the deletion of the thread - and thus the response can benefit others asking the same question. It also makes sure the company has a chance to respond on their own terms, instead of having to fight a PR battle against rumours posted on tech sites (or other communities) where they don't have an opportunity to respond.

But the question is valid, and to be perfectly frank, enough people have asked me in the past month that it was worth digging up a login I hadn't used in years just to ask it.

Cheers.

Your thread wouldn't get deleted as a response, because that would state to much as an action.

I doubt you'd get a "we are going under" in a thread as the people who typically know, don't actually post.

I think you're just going to get either dead pan silence or a few "we're doing fine" comments.

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No company is going to tell you, hey we're probably going to be out of business in 2 years, because they might as well close the moment they make that announcement. It guarantees that everyone you have left leaves both for customers and employees.

I think it's safe to say Spiceworks ran out of runway with the on prem windows software which is why they transitioned to a cloud product. The question is, does spiceworks generate enough revenue from ads from the on prem product to cause it to go under if that product dies. I would like to think the answer to that is no and that the bulk of the revenue comes from the community site and now to a degree their cloud hosted products.

"
Spiceworks is effectively the core of a SIEM platform
"

I don't see how you come to that conclusion at all. I would never make a free product the core of any SIEM platform and Spiceworks is not designed to be a SIEM. Spiceworks does not do real time analysis of security events, so I'm not sure what you are getting at there.

Is the Spiceworks windows product still viable? Somewhat but that is moving further and further away from being viable daily. They need to bring their cloud offering up to parity sooner than later, or people will find something else (although they will most likely have to pay for something).

Normally, I don't put much stock in rumours either. That said, I wrote quite a bit about Spiceworks in the trade press years back. The consequence of this has been that when people hear things about Spiceworks - and/or have various flavours of insider information - they regularly bring that to me. One person saying something like that, that's interesting. Two, that's coincidence. Three's a pattern. More than three, over more than a month, with the sources coming from multiple origin points, and the people involved all having different agendas...that's when I start asking questions.

An official response from the company, in public, matters. For a whole host of reasons. You'll have to forgive me if reassurances from people who are devoted enough to the community to be at "Mace" in the ranking system aren't reassuring in this scenario. There is a solid argument to be made that devoted community members have incentive to pretend all is normal, and that it always will be.

But official responses from a company carry legal repercussions, removing at least some of the incentive to mislead, ignore warning signs, or so forth. So in this circumstance, the only reassurances that can actually mean anything are those that bear a staffer's stamp. Sorry.

@PatrickFarrell re: "Spiceworks is effectively the core of a SIEM platform": you are correct, I wrote SIEM but what I meant was "Spiceworks is effectively the core of a helpdesk platform". I think I wrote SIEM because I'm in the middle of writing a bunch of papers about SIEM. It's correct of you to call that mistake out.

As for "No company is going to tell you, hey we're probably going to be out of business in 2 years", well, if you know that you don't have the runway, and that your options for achieving funding are essentially spent, but you choose to tell customers "all is well", that has implications too.

@bbigford, re: "Your thread wouldn't get deleted as a response, because that would state to much as an action.

I doubt you'd get a "we are going under" in a thread as the people who typically know, don't actually post.

I think you're just going to get either dead pan silence or a few "we're doing fine" comments."

I disagree with the "deleted" bit - Spiceworks and/or mods have deleted far more innocuous threads - but the rest I mostly agree with. Still, in asking, each response (or non response) tells a tale. Also, I will be able to point those who have asked, as well as those who ask in the future, at this thread (or the deleted and archived corpse of it). People are asking. I don't have the answers. Asking generates new data that can be used by those who are interested in making their decisions.

The whole point of your post is that rumour or not you want to consider other applications in case the worst happens - why not simply say that?

All being said, this is true of paid products - will it stop working, no, will it lose some functionality - yes.

Should you consider an alternative offering - sure, that's your personal choice and no one here can advise you not to, even if we knew something to be true as it would be known under confidentiality, but as others pointed out, the future of any product of service is never going to be published if it's all down hill as people will quickly walk instead of trying to aid in bringing it back on-level.

To cut down your topic, you want to know if you should be looking at other products or services and what we recommend - that alone would have done and avoided conflict between others over your 'information' which may or may not be fact at this point.

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The big one is that I don't know if Spiceworks (the app) will continue to function if the servers on Spiceworks' side are turned off, and/or to what extent functionality would be compromised.

I have ran spiceworks with no internet connection (essentially "turning off" the Spiceworks servers) and it continues to function. If the day comes that Spiceworks officially closes it's doors I would expect to be able to continue using both the inventory and help desk portions for years to come. I think people will have plenty of time to find something else if they even ever feel the need to do so.

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Normally, I don't put much stock in rumours either. That said, I wrote quite a bit about Spiceworks in the trade press years back. The consequence of this has been that when people hear things about Spiceworks - and/or have various flavours of insider information - they regularly bring that to me. One person saying something like that, that's interesting. Two, that's coincidence. Three's a pattern. More than three, over more than a month, with the sources coming from multiple origin points, and the people involved all having different agendas...that's when I start asking questions.

An official response from the company, in public, matters. For a whole host of reasons. You'll have to forgive me if reassurances from people who are devoted enough to the community to be at "Mace" in the ranking system aren't reassuring in this scenario. There is a solid argument to be made that devoted community members have incentive to pretend all is normal, and that it always will be.

But official responses from a company carry legal repercussions, removing at least some of the incentive to mislead, ignore warning signs, or so forth. So in this circumstance, the only reassurances that canactually mean anything are those that bear a staffer's stamp. Sorry.

Devoted people are only devoted because they believe in a product until the company themselves say they are going under. Even then, some carry it on if the source code is open and the license agreement allows it.

That whole bit about "not trusting a Mace" sounds ridiculous. I'm not one to intentionally waste my own time. If you want reassurance from a Pimiento who has been here a day, rather than someone who has been around the community a bit longer and saw trends, that would just be confusing.

"There is a solid argument to be made that devoted community members have incentive to pretend"... Put your tin foil hat back on. Not all near the top of a ranking system are somehow involved with insider information. I'm not a mod, and I haven't been here half as long as some who have been around since the beginning.

@Rod-IT re: "The whole point of your post is that rumour or not you want to consider other applications in case the worst happens - why not simply say that?"

Because that's not the point of my post. The point of my post is so that other people, who keep asking me about the issues discussed, will be able to get chapter and verse on the topic. What I know is now public record, as is the response (or lack thereof) from Spiceworks.

This means that when people ask me, I can point them at this topic. I have also pointed all clients (and former clients) who are using Spiceworks at this topic. They now almost all the information I have (where the information that I have, which they don't, is essentially "the names and positions of people who talked to me about this issue").

This allows the (rather quite a lot) of people who have been asking about this to see the questions, the reactions (or lack thereof) without bias or interference from me. This allows them to infer whatever they feel they need to infer, and make decisions with as much data as possible. Full stop.

Personally, I stopped using the Spiceworks app in production ages ago. There is an install kicking around in one my labs, but it's not the end of the world if I have to migrate that one.

The larger issues are:

A) I was responsible for helping a fair number of SMBs deploy Spiceworks to make their helldesk operations go. Even though I am not personally supporting any of those operations any longer, I feel a duty of care to convey to them any information I might encounter which could affect the outcome of advice I gave them.

B) People ask me for my opinion and advice. I prefer to ensure they have the most accurate and up-to-date information that is possible. When the question is "will the company go kaphut", then the best people to ask are those who work at said company.

I try to live my life as supported by data and evidence and possible. We don't always have access to as much data as we'd like, but I feel it is irresponsible not to try.

You are welcome to your opinion, however, I do not view it as ridiculous. Individuals who have achieved a high rank on any social platform have historically been blinded to issues within those social platforms. This goes way back to before the internet, but the internet gives us innumerable examples. Also, I don't particularly care what any Spiceworks community member thinks of the questions posed in this thread. It's the employees whose reactions I am really interested in.

re: "Not all near the top of a ranking system are somehow involved with insider information. I'm not a mod, and I haven't been here half as long as some who have been around since the beginning."

I don't recall saying that you would have "insider information". (Although I do know for a fact that Spiceworks has in the past given information, and other special treatment to individuals who are high ranking that other members do not receive.) The reason I don't trust the viewpoint of high-ranking members of any community is because humans are tribal. We are remarkably capable of wearing blinders when anything, anyone or any data/facts challenge our position of power/influence/respect/etc. within any community in which we anticipate.

Literally all of human history details this. Nobody has to look very far for examples: many western nations are literally living this out in real time via interesting flavours of hyperpartisan politics. Maybe you, personally, are somehow immune to our tribal nature. If so, hey, that's fantastic! But without becoming deeply immersed in that selfsame community, it's unlikely that any outside would be able to determine your individual objectivity, and it is dangerous to presume objectivity when tribalism is historically far more common.

@Jason1122 re: "I have ran spiceworks with no internet connection (essentially "turning off" the Spiceworks servers) and it continues to function. If the day comes that Spiceworks officially closes it's doors I would expect to be able to continue using both the inventory and help desk portions for years to come. I think people will have plenty of time to find something else if they even ever feel the need to do so."

The people who ask you about Spiceworks and what's happening obviously don't want to ask themselves otherwise they'd be here asking.

Even more so since you've told us you no longer use it

Trevor Pott wrote:

@Jason1122 re: "I have ran spiceworks with no internet connection (essentially "turning off" the Spiceworks servers) and it continues to function. If the day comes that Spiceworks officially closes it's doors I would expect to be able to continue using both the inventory and help desk portions for years to come. I think people will have plenty of time to find something else if they even ever feel the need to do so."

Thank you! This is helpful information.

Just FYI but I did post it would still work albeit with limited functionality.

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I wish this thread didn't start over a long weekend, as it gives time for things to get crazy before any official response can happen. SO far the thread has been reasonable.

I am personally much more dependent on the Spiceworks community than any piece of software or other service that they provide. We pay for help desk software from another vendor whose name also starts with "S". We upgrade/rebuild/look at our Spiceworks inventory every once in a while.

I trust that Trevor has more and better sources than I do. He speaks with wisdom, but not a crystal ball. I never followed his lead on Maxta for example, though we don't know if the Maxta product technology is truly dead, or just mostly dead. Heck, Violin seems to be back...

No, it's not. I can think of several memorable ones over the years. But in each of those incidents I say the issue being driven by nervous end users. This is different. The nervous end users are only a part of the story here. The bigger driver is the absolute flood of people reaching out to me from sources other than end users.

Look, we've all seen these topics come and go. And for the most part, I have ignored all of that over the years. But I have now a significant double digit number of separate individuals whom I would classify as "not end users" who have reached out to me about this. In ~2/3rds of the cases I they have been something along the lines of "I have heard this, did you hear this"? But in the other 1/3rd it was people saying "look, I am emphatically not supposed to be telling you this, but..."

Now, again, normally, I'd be pretty skeptical of people asking after rumours, but a couple of things are colliding here. The first is that the sheer volume of requests in a short (three month) timeframe is at least an order of magnitude beyond anything I've seen in the 7+ years I've been covering Spiceworks. Secondly, the inquiries by end users really started picking up about a week ago.

Now, until this thread, I don think I've really engaged on this topic for ages, so it wasn't me spreading doom and gloom. The Mango Lassi crowd are no more publicly dour about Spiceworks' prospects than usual, and I see no interest in Spiceworks' market share from any other players.

All of this means that if the questions/rumours/news tips/etc about Spiceworks' imminent demise are just shade being thrown by some competitor (or wannabe competitor), I can't identify who that individual or entity might be. And that makes it worth asking hard questions, even knowing that it drags me back into the soap opera.

But yes, the end users who ask me don't want to get on here and ask themsevles. Generally, the ones who are asking me are individuals or orgnaizations I introduced to Spiceworks way back when. They know I covered the company and product, and they (not irrationally) think I might have some behind the scenes knowledge or info.

Asking the question publicly seems like an entirely rational way to address all the various concerns and questions. It gives the company the opportunity to say something like "hell no, we're doing great, look at the gigantic bags of money we have, we'll be here forever". Or not. As they fit.

But yeah, I'd say that this particular round of "is the ship sinking" feels pretty different than previous ones. And, just so we're clear, I am emphatically not saying anything along the lines of "I know for sure Spiceworks is doomed". There could be all sorts of reasons for the above.

Spiceworks could be just fine and someone that is beyond my skills to indentify is trying to thwart them. Spiceworks could be experiencing a bit of a rocky period, but will come out swinging with a new round of funding. Everything could be hunky-dory, and this is a bizarre artifact of the internet and the telephone game.

But A) Spiceworks themselves deserve to know what's making the rounds, and to respond to this. B) The end users deserve the chance to have the hard questions asked, and to be able to act on the data/reactions (or lack thereof) from Spiceworks.

The very fact that Spiceworks has gone through so many of these threads of the years means that another one is unlikely to affect Spiceworks in any meaningful manner. But the issues are important, and they deserve to be addressed.

@kevinmhsieh Maxta had decent tech, but they failed to execute. 6 years ago, that was less apparent, as startups tend to focus more on technology at an early stage, and less on business plan. As the years wore on, however, it became clear that the tech wasn't enough.

Our industry is littered with the corpses of various startups, and I have personally enjoyed - and even endorsed - more than a few who didn't make it. The issue is rarely tech. The issue is almost always people.

As for my sources, I wish I could say that I have "better" sources than someone else. I have a diversity of sources here, but I don't have, for example, an exec in my back pocket telling me all is lost. If I did, I'd simply have written an article about it so that users could be warned, and thought no more of it. Instead, the list of sources are somewhere between "I pretty sure I could write an article about this and not get sued into a crater" and "this is a fact".

And that's part of why I felt the best place to ask/talk about this was the support section of Spiceworks itself. Because I don't have a crystal ball. Because the best I can do is assemble data points and extrapolate.

And because, years ago, I talked about how cool Spiceworks was, right alongside Maxta, Scale Computing, and many others. Most of them are gone now, with Scale Computing being one of the few bright spots in the past decade's worth of tech companies I've enjoyed and/or evangelized. If Spiceworks does end up pulling a Maxta, I'd prefer that the folks I introduced to them be forewarned as much as possible.

There's something in there about feeling a sense of responsibility for promoting cool tech and/or a cool company, only to have it crash and burn a few years later.

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I'm always amazed at the loyalty (borderline hostility) that crops up whenever anyone questions the status of the Spiceworks application. Removing the emotion, the facts in evidence are pretty clear. If you looked up a project on Github and it said, "Last update 2017," you'd call that projected dead - and rightly so.

Spiceworks does what it does. And that's all it's ever going to do. If you can live with that, then there's a happy ending for you. If you can't live with its current limitations (slow, error-prone, unreliable), then your decision to move on is already made. Again, no need for conflict.

Spiceworks is a company, not your BFF. No one's criticism of it or its products is mean to be a personal assault.

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I'm always amazed at the loyalty (borderline hostility) that crops up whenever anyone questions the status of the Spiceworks application. Removing the emotion, the facts in evidence are pretty clear. If you looked up a project on Github and it said, "Last update 2017," you'd call that projected dead - and rightly so.

Spiceworks does what it does. And that's all it's ever going to do. If you can live with that, then there's a happy ending for you. If you can't live with its current limitations (slow, error-prone, unreliable), then your decision to move on is already made. Again, no need for conflict.

Spiceworks is a company, not your BFF. No one's criticism of it or its products is mean to be a personal assault.

Is this not in some respects a fan site?

If you want be critical of Britney Spears, choosing her website or her fanclubs site are not going to be where you get the most support.

You are welcome to your opinion, however, I do not view it as ridiculous. Individuals who have achieved a high rank on any social platform have historically been blinded to issues within those social platforms. This goes way back to before the internet, but the internet gives us innumerable examples. Also, I don't particularly care what any Spiceworks community member thinks of the questions posed in this thread. It's the employeeswhose reactions I am really interested in.

re: "Not all near the top of a ranking system are somehow involved with insider information. I'm not a mod, and I haven't been here half as long as some who have been around since the beginning."

I don't recall saying that you would have "insider information". (Although I do know for a fact that Spiceworks has in the past given information, and other special treatment to individuals who are high ranking that other members do not receive.) The reason I don't trust the viewpoint of high-ranking members of any community is because humans are tribal. We are remarkably capable of wearing blinders when anything, anyone or any data/facts challenge our position of power/influence/respect/etc. within any community in which we anticipate.

Literally all of human history details this. Nobody has to look very far for examples: many western nations are literally living this out in real time via interesting flavours of hyperpartisan politics. Maybe you, personally, are somehow immune to our tribal nature. If so, hey, that's fantastic! But without becoming deeply immersed in that selfsame community, it's unlikely that any outside would be able to determine your individual objectivity, and it is dangerous to presume objectivity when tribalism is historically far more common.

This is where we part.

You aren't asking for a "viable alternative" so much as you are simply trying to stir a pot at this point.

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I may or may not have missed it, but I don't see any responses whatsoever from the Spiceworks Team. Regardless, I would be very grateful if they stuck around. ITPros need their own platform for discussions, resources etc. etc.

You've treated me well SW. Won't blame you if you head towards monetizing your pages with marketing material to stay afloat. Just do what you have to to stick around.

I don't particularly care what any Spiceworks community member thinks of the questions posed in this thread. It's the employees whose reactions I am really interested in.

Yet you post your question on the public forum, knowing people will respond.

We are all aware things have changed, staff have left, the app development has dwindled and products have been cancelled, but the community is still the community.

If you feel the app is dying or dead and that you should be advising clients to look at alternatives, that's your choice until there is a confident answer, which I doubt you will get here in this thread or even directly by emailing staff. At this point all we can do is make an best guess if the product will be around in x years or not.

You certainly wouldn't tell your clients to start looking for a new provider if your business was suffering, because you would lose the little income you was getting. Instead you would remain quiet, perhaps mention times are harder than usual but hold out hope your business would pick up and no one need know about the issues you faced, any company who directly tells their clients they are struggling when there is a possible resolution would be mad to do so.